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Tag Archives: freeze peach

There is very little going on (for me) on Mastodon, but it’s still interesting to see how it develops.

My latest thing is leaving a a desktop client called Whalebird open. Another Electron app… which obviously isn’t ideal, but becoming a trend – it’s quick to throw together a standalone app wrapped around the existing browser interfaces. Unfortunately it’s essentially running a full browser for every app. That probably isn’t as bad as it sounds (modern o/s have on demand page loading, etc) but it makes every Electron app an easy target for accusations of bloat.. one of those mind-numbing discussion killers, which is increasingly at odds with the amount of memory available (and generally sitting unused).

Meanwhile there is more discussion, beyond “It’s federated! It’s good!”, focusing on the practical reasons for avoiding Twitter:

The Why: Twitter Is in the Outrage Business; Mastodon Isn’t a Business

Though i don’t think it will happen, it would be interesting to see if Mastodon could survive, in it’s current rather open / tolerant form, an influx of Twitter’s current user base. Perhaps it doesn’t need to, and multiple communities can form on unconnected instances. Do we really need to suffer brands? Will instance owners actively manage their communities, and resist the “freeze peach” pressure to which Twitter has so easily yielded?

When all is said and done, i don’t think Mastodon is ever going to escape it’s niche and challenge Twitter. It might be that it’s too similar for most people’s level on engagement, and a more radical / gimmicky alternative is needed. Until that happens i’m stuck between worlds, with a curated set of Twitter friends followed via RSS!

Edit:

So, @danielpunkass asked for a song about Twitter's FU to 3rd party folks.

Shout out to @tweetbot and Cheap Bots Done Quick by @GalaxyKate, just the two examples I put in the 1 min song.